A Theology of Sabbath
Who feels exhausted? Who feels tired? Who feels rushed and that life is hurried and noisy? Here is an answer, and it’s a theology of Sabbath. Next week, we’ll look at applying practically the discipline of Sabbath.
As Rosemary K.M. Sword and Philip Zimbardo, Ph.D, write in Psychology Today,
Hurry sickness is “a behavior pattern characterized by continual rushing and anxiousness; an overwhelming and continual sense of urgency.” As if that isn’t bad enough, it’s also defined as “A malaise in which a person feels chronically short of time, and so tends to perform every task faster and gets flustered when encountering any kind of delay.”
Sound familiar?
Slow and Sabbath living honestly is something I’ve been continually pursuing for the past 5 or so years. It’s been a challenge as the world continues to be hurried around us. But I know if we pursue Sabbath living and continually seek delighting in the Lord, we will further experience His peace and love.
I remember coming home from a trip to Nashville, Indiana, and my wife and I just loved the pace while there. Relaxed. Good sleep. Not really on our devices. Enjoying conversations with each other. We were coming home and discussing this question: how do we embrace that pace of living in Nashville in our everyday lives?
The final straw for us was a bit after Isaiah, my son, was born. We were consistently gone 4 times a week in the evening, and it was draining us. It wasn’t uncommon for that to get to 6 of the 7 evenings, and we finally got to a place where we had to say no. That was a no to a small group we loved. It also meant rearranging our days and schedules so that if a busy week was happening, we could still embrace Sabbath. A 24-hour period of true, soul-fueling, beholding, and delighting in God. We’re looking today at going from hurried to relaxed and rested through Sabbath living.
Our culture doesn’t like the Sabbath, but I think the people in it do. We can’t wait for our next day off, the next vacation, to get away from this place of hurry. As John Mark Comer writes in Garden City,
“The mantra of our culture is that we work to live. The American dream–which started out as a brilliant idea that everybody should have a shot at a happy life–has devolved over the years into a narcissistic desire to make as much money as possible, in as little time as possible, with as little effort as possible, so that we can get off work and go do something else.”
John Mark Comer, Garden City
Hence, Sabbath. Here’s why. I’m convinced that something we all desire is really a Sabbath lifestyle where we rest well with sleeping, work at a good pace, and have a life that is unhurried. To get there, though, we overwork ourselves beyond exhaustion and constantly lean on the verge of burnout. We think money will make us happy, status will make us happy, being involved and stretched thin across different clubs or community opportunities will make us happy, or help us grow our resume, but these things often leave us wanting more. We think if we get to the top as quickly as possible, work will be easy, but in reality, it requires long hours of us away from our families and churches, with a hope of retiring early, only to find out we want to stay at that unsustainable pace. As Henri Nouwen writes,
“Much, if not most, of our suffering is connected with these preoccupations. Possible career changes, possible family conflicts, possible illnesses…make us anxious, fearful, suspicious, greedy, nervous, and morose. They prevent us from feeling a real inner freedom…Not only being occupied but also being preoccupied is highly encouraged by our society…(about advertisements) Their unrelenting insistence that we will miss out on something very important if we do not read this book, see this movie, hear this speaker, or buy this new product deepens our restlessness and adds many fabricated preoccupations to the already existing ones…They prevent the Spirit of God from breathing freely in us and thus renewing our lives.” (Words in italics and parentheses added by me.)
Henri Nouwen, Making All Things New, 26-28
I want us to look at the Book of Acts and the natural flow of Sabbath keeping that Luke records. There isn’t a story laying out the foundation of how to Sabbath, but if you read the book of Acts, you will see that the disciples kept the Sabbath 85 times.
Here is a list of Sabbath keeping communities in Acts.
Gentiles keep the Sabbath in Antioch (Acts 13:14)
The Sabbath and the Jerusalem Council (Acts 15). This would have been debated if it were broken.
A Sabbath-keeping church begins in Philippi with Lydia (Acts 16:13-15)
A Sabbath-keeping church begins in Thessalonica (Acts 17:1-3)
A Sabbath-keeping church begins in Corinth (Acts 18:4)
A Sabbath-keeping church begins in Ephesus (Acts 19:8). Paul spoke in the Synagogue, which would have been on the Sabbath, though it’s not directly said.
Paul was NEVER accused of Sabbath-breaking by Jews. That would have been a big no-no.
So the Sabbath is a big deal after Jesus’ death and resurrection, and the disciples show it to be a big deal. Let’s go back to the beginning to get a further theological foundation of the Sabbath.
Let’s go back to the beginning! Genesis 1 is chock-full of ideas, themes, and meanings that we can’t quite get to in this journal entry. People devote the entirety of their research careers to understanding Genesis 1 and its impact on the rest of the story of the Bible. What we are going to look at specifically is day 7 of this creation. In Genesis 1, we get this beautiful and strategic poem about a 7-day creation. There are so many theologies, guesses, opinions, and other things thrown out about Genesis 1. Young earth vs old earth. Was creation a literal 7-day creation? That’s something for another day. What we need to know is that the Israelites had a different view than what we’ve tended to be taught. Seven was a big number for the Israelites. It was a sign of perfection or completeness. The author of Genesis clearly had the significance of seven in mind when constructing the creation account.
There are seven words in Genesis 1:1
Fourteen words in Genesis 1:2.
There are seven paragraphs in Genesis 1:1–2:3, each marked by “evening and morning.” The seventh day is marked differently and will get there.
The concluding seventh paragraph in Genesis 2:1-3 has three lines which have seven words each (Gen. 2:2-3a)
Each key word in Genesis 1:1 is repeated by multiples of seven in Genesis 1:2–2:3.
God, 35x (7 x 5)
Land, 21x (7 x 3)
Skies, 21x (7 x 3)
Several key words are repeated seven times.
Light and day on day one
Light on day four
Living creature (on days five and six
God saw that it was good
God speaks ten times in Genesis 1:1–2:3.
Seven times are creative commands to the creation itself, “Let there be…”
Three times are divine initiatives toward humanity: “Let us make adam,” “Be fruitful and multiply,” and “Behold, I have given you….”
(These notes came from the BibleProject study guide on Sabbath!)
It’s easy to see that the author wants to get the attention of the reader or listener to pay attention to the seven days, but more importantly, the culmination of what happens on the seventh day. Let’s read Genesis 2:1-3 to find out.
Thus the heavens and the earth were completed in all their vast array. By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested from all his work. Then God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it he rested from all the work of creating that he had done.
Genesis 2:1-3 NIV
At the climax of creation, God rests. There are two functions of the word rest here that we should understand that emphasize the impact of God’s rest even further.
Shabat: To cease from.
Nuak: To take up residence.
“God’s rest is about God’s presence taking up its rest within a sacred space by filling it with his divine presence. Creation is depicted as the cosmic temple, filled with God’s presence on the climactic Sabbath.”
So, on this seventh day, God ceases from work and takes up residence in His beautiful creation. What’s cool about this seventh day is that there is no evening and morning. The seventh day has no end because it’s a representation of a place where He is dwelling with His image bearers in harmony forever. This is Heaven. This is what will happen when Jesus comes back and reunites heaven and earth in a Garden-City and we get to be with Him as the community of His followers forever. And if we want to become people of rest in a culture of hurry and exhaustion and portray this Truth of the seventh day, then it means we pursue the practice of Sabbath.
This has been more of an introduction and theology of Sabbath, but next week, in part 2, we’ll dive into the practicality of living a rhythm of Sabbath! It’s a beautiful, fun, and loving gift from God that’s changed mine and my family’s lives!
